Writing a review of Jerry Zucker's Rat
Race without mentioning It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
would be a gross oversight, since this movie is so obviously patterned
after it. However, calling Zucker's film a remake of Stanley
Kramer's classic 1963 screwball comedy would be giving it too
much credit. I would think a better term would be "pathetic
attempt to emulate" the earlier film. Rat Race has
its funny moments (which would undoubtedly be funnier if it were
more original), but its clear similarities to Mad, Mad
serve to underscore its flaws, giving it a built-in handicap from
the proverbial get-go. However, judged on its own merits it's
a passable comedy about a dozen or so people who race across the
country (or at least 563 miles) to win a $2 million treasure,
getting themselves in all sorts of wacky situations along the
way. It features moments of inanity from virtually all its participants,
but only scores the occasional chuckle for its effort. Writer/producer/director
Zucker, whose directorial credits include comedies like Airplane!
and Ruthless People, and romances like Ghost and
First Knight, manages to pull off his version of the old-fashioned
celebrity romp in just under 2 hours.

The story begins in a Las Vegas casino, where a number of random
people are selected to engage in a race for the aforementioned
$2 mil, hidden in a railroad station locker in Silver City, New
Mexico, by the casino's owner, the very wealthy and oily Donald
Sinclair (John Cleese, sporting a ridiculously large and ill-fitting
set of false teeth). Unbeknownst to the largely selfish and common-sense-challenged
group, Sinclair's real reason for the caper is to allow a collection
of international high-rollers to bet on which of the schmucks
will make it first.

The principal participants are aspiring attorney and self-admitted
"most gullible person on Earth" Nick Shaffer (Breckin
Meyer), who first decides not to participate but changes his mind
when he meets fresh-faced helicopter pilot Tracy Faucet (Amy Smart);
middle-aged nice lady Vera Baker (Whoopi Goldberg) and her long-lost
daughter, edgy businesswoman Merrill Jennings (Lanei Chapman),
who met each other for the first time right before becoming involved
in the race; doofy con artist brothers Duane and Blaine Cody (Seth
Green and Vince Vieluf), whose only reason for being in Vegas
was to rip someone off; NFL ref Owen Templeton (Cuba Gooding Jr.),
enjoying recent notoriety for a bad call at a Dallas game (which
nearly everyone in Vegas had money riding on); vacationing family
Randy and Bev Pear (Jon Lovitz, Kathy Najimy) and their kids (Brody
Smith, Jillian Marie); and finally, narcoleptic Italian Enrico
Pollini (Rowan Atkinson), whose grasp of the situation seems almost
as tenuous as his ability to stay awake.

As in the 1963 film, this group breaks off, mostly in pairs,
and gets in all sorts of ridiculous situations, traveling in every
kind of vehicle imaginable (except an airplane), including various
cars and trucks, a taxicab, helicopter, hot air balloon, rocket
car, tour bus, mental hospital bus, a chartered bus en route to
an I Love Lucy convention, and Adolph Hitler's Rolls Royce.
Meanwhile, Sinclair and his assistant (Dave Thomas) keep their
guests busy by letting them bet on everything from what a Vegas
hooker will charge for a butt shave to who'll throw up first on
the flight to New Mexico. The film ends at a Silver City Smash
Mouth concert, with the actors all gleefully moshing over the
end credits. It's almost worth the ticket price alone to see Kathy
Najimy dive off the stage into the audience; at any rate Rat
Race, while nowhere near the level of its mad, mad predecessor,
is adequate fun and merits at least a passing grade. ***½